It has been 45 days since I last wrote on Ebola. We who write understand that for most of us our voices are mere bubbles in the vast river of conversation that flows around our planet. We hope, if our analysis is correct, that others with more influence communicate a similar message.
Here is a chart of the number of searches, equatable to global interest, for ebola in the last three months.
Last three months of global searches for ebola
This chart is screaming, “Interest in Ebola is dying out just when the contagion is getting it’s stride.” Ebola is, for us, an event of interest like the war on ISIS. It does not, right now, immediately effect us. We are immune to the disasters that plague Africa. Ebola is not a local War or even a well funded war that effects the global price of oil. It is a contagion without an effective counter measure. The only counter measure we have found in the past to be effective, isolation of the contaminated, is failing us.
It is well known that we as a species underestimate the future potential of a true disaster and overestimate our ability to deal with it.
I applaud the media for elevating the true potential of the disaster that awaits mankind if we are not effective in our war against Ebola, right now. The medias efforts are waning. This is the second egregious mistake with respect to this outbreak of Ebola we as a civilization have made. The first egregious mistake was underestimating the potential impact of Ebola on the world’s population and consequently not shutting down all traffic in and out of areas with the contagion. The second egregious mistake is not utilizing global media to elevate awareness and as such reaction to the contagion.
Here is the trend data from google for hot searches in the last two days.
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Saturday, September 20, 2014
An analogy for the search behavior on the internet reflecting global interest and concern is:
A man is walking across the street with a friend reading a People magazine. He looks up to see a semi-tractor coming in their direction start to skid out of control two blocks away, points at the incident, and tells his friend. His friend looks up from reading, calculates that he will be across the intersection before the truck arrives, and goes back to reading. The truck explodes into a fireball and continues towards the two men as they near the other side of the street. The fellow reading People continues to read. The People magazine reader failed to determine the speed, the momentum, and the possible chain reaction possible from the oncoming semi going out of control. Those miscalculations will cost him his life.
To repeat the obvious. No person should be allowed out of any country that has people infected with Ebola. No exceptions till the contagion is checked. Not to employ this recipe is to continue to read People magazine as our certain death approaches.
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